PETE SEARS’ 50-YEAR CAREER CONNECTS British folk, blues, and psychedelic rock with sister San Francisco sounds. Keyboard and bass-session work for Rod Stewart and tours with Long John Baldry prompted Sears to join Jefferson Starship and Hot Tuna, and led to collaborations with John Lee Hooker. Sears is currently a member of psychedelic torchbearers Moonalice and the David Nelson Band, a.k.a. New Riders Of The Purple Sage. Sears’ sound has ranged from bright and aggressive with Jefferson Starship (think of “Stranger”) to the mellower, flatwound sound he favors in Moonalice. Similarly, his technique ranges from extremely simple to rather complex. His far-out fingerstyle becomes a furious blur of motion when he truly takes off .

Do you use all four fingers on your plucking hand, and are you incorporating upstrokes as well as downstrokes?

It may appear otherwise, but I play downstrokes using my first three fingers for the most part. For simple songs, I use only my index finger for more of an upright aesthetic. I incorporate my middle finger when I feel the need for more notes and add my ring finger to the equation to for faster passages. In those circumstances I lead with my ring finger, so it’s 3–2–1 [ring , middle, index]. My pinkie might sneak in occasionally or come along for a ride with the 3rd finger.

HAVE YOU SEEN THIS BASS? Some loser stole Pete Sears’ custom Doug Erwin bass, and his ’63 Fender Jazz, when a riot broke out before a Jefferson Starship gig in Germany in 1978. He’s still trying to locate them. What rhythmic influences helped shape your plucking style?

Sometimes I incorporate tabla rhythms that I picked up back in 1967 when I played in a band called Sam Gopal Dream, which featured a brilliant raga guitar player named Mick Hutchinson and an Indian tabla player, Sam Gopal. I’d learn his tabla rhythms and use my three-finger technique to match his playing. For example, I might play the root tone of the raga along with the low-pitched drum [bayan], and then hit the octave above along with the high-pitched drum [dayan].

Plucking over the neck adds an extra percussive element, and you can incorporate slapping & tapping up and down the strings to get various harmonics to ring out over the top. If you bend a fretted note once in a while, you can emulate the sound a tabla player makes when he pushes down on the lowpitched drum’s head.

That’s an intriguing technique, and it’s fun to watch.

Bass is a concept—a way of thinking where you and the drummer become one. In that case, the drummer was a tabla player and it led to all kinds of interesting things. We shared bills with Pink Floyd and Fairport Convention. Jimi Hendrix sat in with us. We got a raga going with him, and he started sliding his guitar back and forth across the mic stand—now that was fun!

AFTER A LONG AND TURBULENT RISE TO undeniable success, capsized by controversy and a broken public image, Pete Wentz announced in 2009 that Fall Out Boy was going on indefinite hiatus, while stating that he believed “the world needed a little less Pete Wentz.”

"BASSES ARE LIKE microphones,” says Doug Wimbish. “What sounds good in one player’s hands can sound like crap in another’s. Everything depends on exactly what you put into it.” Wimbish is a master of touch, and he uses a wealth of techniques to yield the rich tone that he’s applied to practically every style of music in his three-decade session career.

GROWING UP IN WASILLA, ALASKA WAS A UNIQUE experience that shaped Zach Carothers of Portugal. The Man. “We were so isolated that it was hard to discover hip, new bands,” he explains. “Luckily, my parents listened to great music by Pink Floyd, the Beatles, and Led Zeppelin.” After a few years living practically next door to then-mayor Sarah Palin, P.TM relocated to Portland, Oregon. The group’s new CD, The Satanic Satanist, inventively folds psychedelic and R&B influences into its distinctive take on indie rock.

“KEEPING THE HISTORY OF MUSIC alive is the most important aspect of playing,” says Ashish “Hash” Vyas. Like a lot of self-taught rock kids, he discovered blues and jazz by tracing the roots of Led Zeppelin. “I wanted to be Jimmy Page on bass,” he admits. As a teenager, Vyas was into the punk aesthetics of Sonic Youth and Nirvana. Serving as a DJ at San Diego State University opened his ears to everything. In 1995, he started the experimental outfit Gogogo Airheart. The band released five albums on Gold Standard Labs records, which was co-owned by Mars Volta’s Omar Rodriguez. Since 2004, Vyas has applied his deep and varied music appreciation to the world-oriented, DJ-driven livetronica outfit Thievery Corporation, and he works with several artists on the band’s ESL label